Friday, March 31, 2006

Well yes. The economy is doing nicely. However, I'm talking explosives. 700 tons of explosives. Set to go off near Las Vegas. Breitbart has the story:

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," he told defense reporters.

Very large penetrators for deeply buried bunkers. I wonder if he means Iran.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Chicago Boyz has an interesting post on the German view of America. Here is an excerpt:

It was not the goal of this book to discuss whether America can win the war, or whether it must lose it. But perhaps it has become clear —and that was my goal — that America does not deserve to win the war and spread its system over the entire world. There is nothing in the American system worth imitating, either for Germany or Europe. If Americanism conquered the world, it would mean the end of all human values and of genuine freedom — the freedom to do something, not from something! — of all the values for which Europe has fought and suffered for millennia, for which it has given all its strength of body and soul.

No European could exchange places with an American. America is a pitiable country and the Americans are a betrayed people, betrayed by their leaders...

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Joel Bainerman has this to say about the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict:

A truly objective analysis of this subject, without the baggage Jews and Arabs have been fed via their national leaderships, reveals that the Middle East conflict would have ended decades ago had foreigners not kept it alive. The continuation of the conflict serves their interests- i.e., oil supplies, recycling petrodollars, or multi-billion dollar weapons sales. The Palestinian-Israeli “situation” is thus merely a fig leaf for the FE, allowing their other agendas can be pursued undetected.

We need to devise a solution based on the actual cause for the continuation of the conflict, and not accept solutions presented via the mainstream media.

After the SPD/Green government came to power in September 1998, Germany became of all states the single most important supplier of funds to the Palestinian Authority. In per capita terms, no other population group in the world receives more substantial German aid. With the initiation of the Al-Aqsa-Intifada in September 2000, the influence that this financial support gave Germany took on new significance. Nonetheless, when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited Yasser Arafat in November 2000, he did not demand Arafat’s return to the negotiating table. On the contrary, he, in effect, gave the PLO-chief the green light for the Intifada. At the time, a member of the Chancellor’s delegation remarked: “Schröder does not want to put pressure on Arafat to return to the negotiating table. It is not sensible to link future development aid to the willingness to compromise of the Palestinians.” On that first of November 2000, a course was set. Using the leverage of German development aid, one might have been able to force Arafat to make peace with Israel und thus markedly improved the conditions of life of in particular the Palestinians. But the attempt was not even made. Instead, German development aid would, in effect, henceforth be made to keep pace with the suicide attacks: despite the rise in the latter, Germany’s financial aid for Arafat was likewise increased.

Now isn't that interesting? The Germans financing a war on the Jews. Why would they commit to such a policy?

Already in 1998, the director of the German Institute for Middle East Studies [Orient-Institut], Udo Steinbach, enthused that in light of the enormous “sympathy” that Germany “traditionally enjoys in the entire region”, the Federal Republic is “widely regarded in the Middle East as a future great power” that could “represent a counterweight to the all too dominant American exercise of power.” [43] The “traditional sympathy” in question notably comprises the today still widespread admiration of National Socialism.

Well isn't that special. The article goes on to note:

What conclusions can be drawn from this review of Road Map diplomacy? As a rule, all those involved start from the assumption that the USA is the ally of Israel, while the Europeans back the Palestinians. Even though tensions between the USA and Israel have risen in recent months, this assessment remains largely true as far as the USA is concerned. But have the Europeans really been standing up for the interests of the “Palestinians” as such? The history of the Road Map tells a different story: to date the European Union has prioritized support not for the “Palestinians” as such, but for the militant opponents of Israel among them. Of course, if it wanted to do so, the EU, as the biggest provider of funds to the Palestinians, could use its influence to strengthen the hand of the anti-terror elements in the Palestinian camp. But Germany and the EU were and are evidently not interested in doing so.

The article concludes with this caution:

Today, Europe again faces a choice: either it begins to combat radical Islamists and to support their opponents in the Muslim world. Or it gives anti-Semites the world over a sign of tacit approval, inasmuch as it accepts or encourages the jihad against Israel. There is no third way.

It is interesting to note that these Muslim immigrants state quite openly that they are involved in a “war,” and see participation in crime and harassment of the native population as such. This is completely in line with what I have posited before. The number of rape charges in Sweden has quadrupled in just above twenty years. Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six times as common today as they were a generation ago. Most other kinds of violent crime have rapidly increased, too. Instability is spreading to most urban and suburban areas. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or from foreign parents. The phenomenon is not restricted to Sweden. The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations is so extremely high that it is difficult to view these rapes as merely random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. This is happening in most Western European countries, as well as in other non muslim countries such as India. European jails are filling up with Muslims imprisoned for robberies and all kinds of violent crimes, and Muslims bomb European civilians. One can see the mainstream media are struggling to make sense of all of this. That is because they cannot, or do not want to, see the obvious: this is exactly how an invading army would behave: rape, pillage and bombing. If many of the Muslim immigrants see themselves as conquerors in a war, it all makes perfect sense.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Michael Young in a Reason article describes how the Iraq project has failed. However, he also provides evidence which he is unaware of on why the project may in fact be succeeding. It all has to do with the American character.

Churchill once said that "Americans always do the right thing after they have tried everything else". Nothing has changed in the American character in the intervening decades.

It is a weakness and a strength. Why strength? Because eventually the right policy will be found. What is required is time.

The Brits BTW have a name for this managing style - they call it muddling through. We Americans put it in a fancy dress and call it adapting to circumstances.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

By the standards of contemporary biblical scholarship, most of the questions being posed by scholars like Puin and Rippin are rather modest; outside an Islamic context, proposing that the Koran has a history and suggesting that it can be interpreted metaphorically are not radical steps. But the Islamic context -- and Muslim sensibilities -- cannot be ignored. "To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community," says R. Stephen Humphreys, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "The Koran is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. And ideally -- though obviously not always in reality -- Islamic history has been the effort to pursue and work out the commandments of the Koran in human life. If the Koran is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless."

So there you have it. The Koran can not withstand real scholarship. I say turn the academics with courage loose. Where is Indiana Jones when you need him? The University of Chicago perhaps?

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

I'm concerned, when the country of Iran, their president announces his desire to see that Israel gets destroyed. Israel is our ally. We're committed to the safety of Israel, and it's a commitment we will keep.

“Anyone who declares war on Israel declares war on the European Union.” Hans-Gert Poettering, German member of the European Parliament and chairman of the Group of the European People’s Party and European Democrats, the largest in the 732-strong EP. Poettering made the opening remarks Tuesday at a workshop on “The role of textbooks in the Middle East conflict” hosted by MEP Jana Hybaskova.

I'd say we are probably rather close to a war with Iran. Some serious sabre rattling going on here.

Using the most uncompromising language he has employed to date in dealing with Iran's nuclear threat, Mr Bush said: "I see a threat in Iran. The threat is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel.

"I've made it clear and I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel," Mr Bush said to applause.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Well, if everyone else is allowed to rewind the tape and replay it, so can I. We could have been living in a different world, and so could the people of Iraq, and I shall go on keeping score about this until the last phony pacifist has been strangled with the entrails of the last suicide-murderer.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Federal Reserve? Nope. NASA. A space probe studying the cosmic microwave background has collected enough data to give us proof of an inflationary period within a few trillionths of a second after the Big Bang.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The United States does not have proof thatIran's government is responsible for the presence of Iranian weapons and military personnel in Iraq, the top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said the United States may slightly increase its troops in Iraq from the current 133,000 to provide more security for an upcoming Shi'ite pilgrimage amid worry about further sectarian violence.

The Jerusalem Post reports a wave of abductions in Gaza. It says that westerners are being escorted to the border.

Following a flurry of abductions Tuesday afternoon, foreigners in the Gaza Strip fled for the Israeli border with the help of the Palestinian police.

"Everyone has left except for the head of the ICRC mission and us," said Grant Leaity, of the humanitarian aid organization Medicins Sans Frontier. "The UN is fully evacuated and the journalists have left too."

Angry Palestinians abducted two French women doctors of Medecins du Monde, a Swiss delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and three unidentified foreigners. Two French journalists were also abducted, but it was unclear if they were from the hotel.

Now why would it be a good idea for the Palistinians to exclude all westerners from Gaza?

Monday, March 13, 2006

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that is was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

I was reading a biography of Albert Einstein by Ronald Clark and came across this interesting bit on page 555.

....Alexander Sachs, a well-known economist and intimate of the President

[Franklin Roosevelt - ed.], did not at the time know much of Einstein's earlier history, since he has gone on record as saying that he has "always been of the view that the real warmongering, combined with defeatism is done by the pacifists."Further corroboration can be found in Erich Fromm's book "Escape From Freedom" published in 1941. In his chapter "Psychology of Nazism" he describes in the Nazis's own words how the submission of others gives the Nazis a feeling of power and in Goebell's own words lifts their depression.

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